


clockwork

by orphan_account



Series: 30 weeks of writing prompts [22]
Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: Developing Relationship, Fluff, Friendship, M/M, Marriage Proposal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-20
Updated: 2020-02-20
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:06:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22489111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: francesca watches ricky and tinsley’s relationship develop as the clock ticks by (week 22 of my 30 weeks of prompts challenge: clocks)
Relationships: Ricky Goldsworth & C.C. Tinsley, Ricky Goldsworth & Francesca Norris, Ricky Goldsworth/C. C. Tinsley
Series: 30 weeks of writing prompts [22]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1495385
Comments: 2
Kudos: 28





	clockwork

Francesca Norris has known Ricky Goldsworth for a very long time. She knew him when they were both innocent children who were too young to understand the horrors of the world. They both enjoyed going to elementary school together, and, when asked about their parents, they both always answered with the same “they work in business” phrase because, in reality, their parents’ jobs were very complicated.

Ricky’s mother Lucy Goldsworth was a famous criminal who was infamous for her reasonable rates and efficiency. When someone needed something illegal to be done, Lucy was always the person people went to. Her husband, Ricky Goldsworth’s dad, was a mobster that he worked with Lucy but ending up running off, hence Ricky’s daddy issues. On the other hand, Francesca’s mother was an infamous spy who was well known for her problems with authority and Francesca’s father was a journalist who was not observative at all.

Francesca’s mother met Lucy on a mission once and they both became fast friends, bonding over their shared hate of government officials. Ricky and Francesca became friends because they saw each other so often when their mothers met up to discuss how dumb politicians were. 

There was no surprise that both mothers were killed during missions and that left a very important decision for Ricky and Francesca. They had to decide whether they wanted to pursue a different path from their parents or take over their jobs. To this day, Francesca still has no idea whether Ricky influenced her or she influenced him, but somewhere along the line, they both agreed to follow in their mothers’ footsteps, becoming “bad people”, instead of ending what their mothers had started.

Ricky has always been cold, even before he started killing people for cash. His cold behavior makes it clear he always destined to take on his mother’s job. Even as a child, he had little remorse to show for other children who were in his way and while he didn’t exactly deal with them by stabbing them, Ricky was still shoved them out of his way with the aggression he would use to stab somebody. Francesca, on the other hand, was responsible for talking the teacher out of punishing Ricky, which is how she realized that she had a hidden power of sweet-talking and persuasion. 

Unsurprisingly, as Ricky spent more time doing his job, he grew more apathetic and whatever little sympathy he had in his heart seemed to have shriveled up and died. Francesca knew that his job required him to practically be drained of any emotion but she was alarmed by the fact that Ricky somehow grew colder as he grew more powerful. 

However, Francesca’s alarm disappeared the day that Ricky stopped by her house for their weekly weekend conversation about life updates and such, since the two still remained best friends even after their new jobs dominated their lives. Francesca was adjusting the position of her clock on the wall (the time read 9:14 at night) when she heard a knock on the door. 

The moment Ricky opened the door, Francesca knew that something was up with him. Her instinctive habits of reading people kicked in and she began noting all the signs, connecting them as she went along. Ricky’s top button was unbuttoned and he never left his top unbuttoned unless he was trying to impress somebody, which he didn’t really need to do in order to attract business since he was pretty well known in the criminal world already. So, this meant that he left his top button unbuttoned for somebody who he was not working with, possibly as a means to express subtle romantic interest.

Before Francesca could scrutinize any further details, Ricky made the connections for her when he took off his blazer and excitedly exclaimed, “You won’t believe what happened today! I met the dumbest, but also cutest, detective today when I was working on an assignment somebody gave to me and apparently, somebody else tipped the authorities off about the assignment so C.C. Tinsley was there and he was definitely not the detective to send because first of all, those long legs are totally wasted if he’s just standing around solving cases all the time and second of all, he got really distracted by my flirting and I managed to slip away with the goods before he could notice. He was really cute though, I’m thinking about seeing him again.”

Ricky paused his rambling to catch his breath and Francesca was shocked into utter silence. She hadn’t heard Ricky talk about anybody so passionately ever in their countless years spent together and she seemed to be unable to process the notion that Ricky Goldsworth wasn’t completely emotionless. Maybe Ricky had finally lost his mind after years of trauma from the horrors he witnessed during his assignments; that would be a more reasonable explanation than the suggestion that Ricky might be catching romantic feelings for somebody. 

“I’m going to take your silence as support. I’m going to see him again, and hopefully ask him out, and maybe this can go somewhere,” Ricky concluded before he took out Francesca’s knife-sharpening tools from her cabinet. Normally, Francesca would’ve teasingly rolled her eyes since he always used her knife-sharpening tools, even though he had a perfectly functioning set at home. Instead, she was still so shocked that she just watched Ricky sharpen knives as he hummed happily to himself.

~

The next time Ricky spoke about C.C.Tinsley, Francesca was just about to go to sleep. It was 1:32 am and frankly, Francesca was more than ready to go to sleep after a long day of staying in disguise for her latest mission. She just finished removing her wig when she received an incoming call from Ricky. Usually, Ricky preferred to stop by to chat so this meant that Ricky either had something urgent to say or something extremely quick. 

Nevertheless, Francesca picked up just in case the case was the former and, just her luck, the case was the latter. Before Francesca could even ask Ricky why he was calling her, Ricky began rambling about C.C. Tinsley.

“Guess what? I talked to him again and convinced him to go out on a date with me! It’s going to be great. But I mean, I obviously maintained my cool and stayed calm but I’m really excited! I know you’re probably planning to sleep right now so sorry for calling you but I just wanted to give you an update! Good night!”

Francesca was very certain that Ricky was either possessed, had too much sugar, or was truly infatuated with this detective for him to sound so energetic at 1:32 in the early morning.

That was not the only instance where Ricky contacted Francesca in the dead of night (or extremely early in the morning). At 3:25 am on a Wednesday night, Francesca woke up since her mission started at 5:30 and she needed two hours in order to get into her disguise. She received a chain of text messages from Ricky about C.C. yet again. This time, it was about how C.C. agreed to finally move up to boyfriend status.

As Francesca put her lipstick on, she read the enthusiastic texts that were all punctuated with several exclamations marks and random keyboard smashes to express the feeling of being overwhelmed with emotions. She was glad that Ricky hadn’t started using emojis to unironically express himself because that would be the most concerning action out of all the actions he did so far. Francesca replies with a few words of encouragement and then told Ricky to sleep and save his love for later.

There were so many more instances where Ricky talked to Francesca about his boyfriend. He invited her to his housewarming party when he and C.C. moved in together at 12:34 am on a Sunday night (technically Monday morning). He also sent her photos from his first vacation with C.C. in some secluded place in the middle of nowhere that had breathtaking views at 7:45 on a Tuesday evening. 

The most memorable one was the most recent one, which was exactly at 2:45 in the early morning when Francesca received a call from Ricky. She predicted that it would be about Tinsley and she picked up, half-awake. “Hey, Ricky, what’s up?”

“Fran, I’m getting married! I just proposed to Tinsley and he said yes. Would you like to be my best man? Well, I mean, technically you’d be my best woman and it goes against tradition but screw tradition.”

“Are you kidding me? I’d love to!” Francesca practically squealed, standing up as joy coursed through her veins. “I’m so happy for you! Congratulations!”

This is what led to Francesca standing at the altar, giving a speech about the specific times that Ricky talked about his fiancé and how the clock seemed to play an important role in the evolution of their relationship. She finished her speech and Ricky and C.C. finally got married after years of being in love at exactly 6:19 in the evening on a Sunday. Their relationship was the definition of clockwork and Francesca felt a little emotional at the thought of her being able to see how they decide to write their future.

**Author's Note:**

> you can find me on tumblr[@luckysam78](https://luckysam78.tumblr.com/)! my bfu sideblog is [@tinsley-goldsworth](https://tinsley-goldsworth.tumblr.com/)! comments and kudos are greatly appreciated!


End file.
